SuBo the musical treats the BGT star with TLC

graysea

There are many pictures on this report:

http://broadwayworld.com/article/Photo-Flash-Susan-Boyle-Sings-at-I-DREAMED-A-DREAM-Opening-Night-20120328

graysea · Wednesday 28 March 2012 08.20 EDT

I Dreamed a Dream – review

Alfred Hickling
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 March 2012 08.20 EDT
Article history

Touching … Elaine C Smith as Susan Boyle in I Dreamed a Dream. Photograph: Bethany Clarke/Getty Images Europe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/mar/28/i-dreamed-a-dream-review?newsfeed=true

graysea

Susan Boyle receives standing ovation at musical premiere - pictures

Published Wednesday, Mar 28 2012, 7:57am EDT | By Ryan Love |

Susan Boyle received a standing ovation as a new musical based on her life received its premiere last night (March 27).

The 'I Dreamed A Dream' star took to the stage at Newcastle's Theatre Royal, where fans from all over the world had come to support the new production, in which Elaine C Smith is playing Boyle.

Boyle herself will make a cameo after the curtain call most nights, performing the Les Misérablestrack which propelled her to fame on Britain's Got Talent.

During the performance, one American fan shouted: "We love you!" to which Boyle responded: "I love you too, see you outside."

Based on her autobiography The Woman I Was Born to Be, the musical tells the story from Boyle's birth, her time at school, being bullied for her learning difficulties, her decision to perform on stage for Simon Cowell in 2008 and subsequent struggle with fame.

American supporter Marie Sheahan Brown praised Smith - who also co-wrote the story - for her role: "I could watch it again, it was fabulous. Elaine did a marvellous job and she can really sing.

"There are people from 15 countries here, and from 20 states in the US. She speaks to a lot of people's hearts. It's not only her stunningly glorious voice, it's her as a person."

Critics have so far given the production a warm welcome, with Dominic Cavendish from The Telegraph writing that the five-star musical is "a delight that deserves to go far, and fast, as she has done".

The Susan Boyle Musical: I Dreamed A Dream will visit 11 UK and Irish cities over the coming months, with Boyle expected to make a similar curtain call appearance at most performances.

http://www.digitalspy.com/celebrity/s107/britains-got-talent/news/a373608/susan-boyle-receives-standing-ovation-at-musical-premiere-pictures.html

graysea

Susan Boyle Tuner I Dreamed a Dream Opens March 27 in Newcastle; Boyle to Appear

By Mark Shenton
27 Mar 2012


Elaine C. Smith

I Dreamed a Dream, a new musical that charts the true life story of U.K. reality TV star and international Youtube sensation Susan Boyle, opens officially at Newcastle's Theatre Royal March 27, following previews that began March 23, prior to a national tour.

The show features Elaine C. Smith as Boyle, with Boyle herself scheduled to make special guest appearances during the run of the show. According to a preview report in the UK's Daily Telegraph, "Boyle is due (but not guaranteed) to appear each night of the run – in Newcastle she performed the song that made her famous, 'I Dreamed a Dream' and 'Who I Was Born to Be', and both received standing ovations."
Also in leading roles are James Paterson and Karen Mann as Pat and Bridie Boyle, her parents; with Ashleigh Gray as Lorraine Campbell, Susan's childhood friend; Jeffrey Harmer as Andy Stephens, Susan's manager; and Liz Ewing as Mrs Johnstone, Susan's school teacher. Other roles are played by Gordon Cooper, Anne Smith, Frances Mayli McCann, David Haydn and Alan McHugh, the latter of whom co-wrote I Dreamed a Dream alongside Elaine C. Smith.
It is directed by Ed Curtis, choreographed by Nick Winston and designed by Morgan Large with lighting design by Ben Cracknell, sound design by Richard Brooker, video design by Jack James with musical supervision and orchestrations by Kennedy Aitchinson. It is produced by Michael Harrison.

According to press materials, the musical tells the story of Susan Boyle's life, from her birth (and the hand which life dealt her) up to the present day. From her humble beginnings of being born into a large working class family in central Scotland, and sharing a three-bedroomed council house with a family of ten, she has become a global star and an inspiration to millions — a woman who beat the odds and changed the way the world looked at people.
After Newcastle, the tour will visit Aberdeen, Bradford, Liverpool, Dublin, Bristol, Southend, Cardiff, Birmingham, Inverness and Manchester.
For full details on the tour, including dates and booking information, visit www.susanboylemusical.com.
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/161083-Susan-Boyle-Tuner-I-Dreamed-a-Dream-Opens-March-27-in-Newcastle-Boyle-to-Appear#.T3JhQItvgsA.facebook

graysea

Susan Boyle takes to stage in new musical of her life

Posted on 28 March 2012 - 10:43am
Last updated on 28 March 2012 - 10:57am

Susan Boyle sings during the musical 'I Dreamed A Dream' at the Royal Theatre in Newcastle, north-east England, on March 27, 2012. I Dreamed A Dream follows Boyle’s journey from a humble beginning from a large working class family in central Scotland to a global star. Boyle came to international public attention when she appeared as a contestant on the TV programme Britain's Got Talent in 2009, singing 'I Dreamed a Dream' from Les Miserables. AFP

NEWCASTLE, United Kingdom (March 28, 2012): Scottish singer Susan Boyle made a triumphant return to the British stage Tuesday at the premiere of a musical charting her rise from humble church volunteer to global superstar.

Wearing a glittering red dress, the 50-year-old received several standing ovations as she sang her signature tune, "I Dreamed A Dream", at the opening night of the musical of the same name in Newcastle, northeastern England.

"We love you," shouted out a member of the audience.

"I love you too -- see me outside," replied Boyle, displaying the cheeky sense of humour that has won her millions of fans, some of whom had travelled from as far as Australia and the United States to attend the premiere.

Before this week, Boyle had not performed in public in Britain since singing for the pope in September 2010. Her two-song set after the musical ended left the Theatre Royal buzzing with excitement.

"She was sensational," said Cathy Garraway, a 49-year-old from Sydney.

"It was worth coming half way around the world to see her tonight."

It is three years since Boyle, a devout Catholic, single and living on welfare in the small village of Blackburn, near the Scottish capital Edinburgh, became an overnight star.

It started when footage of her audition for a British television talent show went viral on the Internet.

In the video, the audience and the judges snigger as Boyle, looking dishevelled and more than a little eccentric steps on to the stage.

Then she opens her mouth to sing "I Dreamed A Dream", the hit from "Les Miserables" -- and that was when her life changed.

The footage has since received about 500 million hits on YouTube, according to the musical's producers. And she has gone on to record three albums that have sold more than 16 million copies worldwide.

The new musical is based on Boyle's autobiography, "The Woman I was Born to Be". It follows her from birth, when she was deprived of oxygen, through school when she was bullied for her learning difficulties, to the years spent caring for her mother.

The scene of her breakthrough moment at the audition had the theatre audience cheering and whooping. But they fell quiet as the tale turned to the intrusion of the press and her near-breakdown when she lost the talent show final.

The story is told as if Boyle is narrating it, with her memories revealed like dreams, full of laughter, dancing, music and the love of her large family, as well as heartache at the deaths of her beloved parents and sister.

"I felt that the world hadn't really heard Susan's voice," said co-writer and actress Elaine C. Smith, who Boyle personally chose to play the role.

Smith describes the singer's life as a "fairytale" but told AFP: "I didn't want it to be a sugary-sweet story.

"What fascinated me was that ordinary woman, and what she'd gone through in her life.

"It is a very delicate balance that you play the truth and you play it honestly, and there is fun in the show but there is also great pathos."

The singer approved the script, which is interspersed with hits from her albums and classic songs she associates with key moments in her life.

But she has yet to watch the musical in full, finding it too painful, Smith said.

Boyle remains mentally fragile, although there was little sign of nerves when she took to the stage Tuesday, sending the audience into a frenzy of delight.

"It just took your heart away," said 79-year-old Jeanette Mole.

After a week in Newcastle, the musical goes on a tour of Britain, after which the producers hope to take it to other parts of Europe, to Canada, the United States and Australia -- although many of Boyle's fans couldn't wait that long.

Maire Byrne, a white-haired 70-year-old from Dublin who was wearing an "I Love SuBo t-shirt", was among about 100 international fans who met online and arranged to come to Newcastle together to see the show.

"It was beautifully done -- this is what she wants the world to know about her," Byrne told AFP.

Meg Neiderer, a 52-year-old from Pennsylvania, added: "It's not just her music, her voice -- her story touches people. I can relate to her."

Smith echoed this, saying: "For 20 years we've been living in a completely celebrity-obsessed culture, where if you're not tall, thin, blonde and gorgeous, particularly as a woman, you don't count.

"Susan has sort of put a bomb under that." –AFP
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/333383

graysea

SuBo the musical treats the BGT star with TLC

By PATRICK MARMION

PUBLISHED: 20:16 EST, 27 March 2012 | UPDATED: 20:16 EST, 27 March 2012

Rating:

Does the world really need a Susan Boyle musical such as this one, that opened last night in Newcastle before heading off on a national tour? Surely her life has been plundered enough already?

A runner-up in Britain’s Got Talent in 2009, Boyle always struck me as a simple woman caught up in a tawdry media frenzy.

Already exploited and hounded to near nervous breakdown by fame vultures, doesn’t she deserve a rest, for heaven’s sake?

Double take: Co-writer and star Elaine C Smith is joined on stage by the real Susan Boyle for the new show about her life, called I Dreamed A Dream

Thank God, then, that this is an affectionate look at her life. The portrait of the 50-year-old from Blackburn, West Lothian, starts with a Dickensian image of a poor but happy family of Catholics, in which young Susan is inspired by a father whose singing ‘could stop a room’.

Early highs included a playground crush thwarted by Dad and a sortie on stage at the Happy Valley Karaoke Club – a last-chance saloon for would-be Elvis impersonators.

Otherwise, Boyle’s life was pretty uneventful. Until, that is, she decided to beat the depression that followed the loss of her parents and eldest sister by singing I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables on BGT. The rest is YouTube legend.

Cast: Ms Boyle stands between fellow actors in the production

This account of her life is in many ways a cocktail of schmaltz and hyperbole.

Schmaltz is delivered in the form of the tunes she grew up with – including Janis Ian’s torch song At Seventeen.

The singer performed on stage at the end of the opening night of the new stage production of her life

Hyperbole comes in the way that Boyle is once more set on a big, chintzy pedestal. But Elaine C Smith from Scotland’s caustic TV show Rab C Nesbitt brings a thick Glaswegian edge to proceedings – and hearty gags to match.

Smith does a fair bit of singing, too, and acquits herself well enough to make you wonder if she’s miming.

But then comes the bonus ball, and raison d’etre of the evening: a personal appearance by Boyle herself, brought on stage to give us her trademark wiggle, goofy thumbs-up and a couple of favourite songs. And that is when you remember that she really does have something special: a rich, sonorous voice with an affecting emotional quiver.

Ed Curtis’s production, performed before a bank of TV screens, is more than just a get-rich-quick scheme or a piece of craven hagiography.

It’s also a jolly good knees-up. Between moments of throat-clearing reverentiality and tear-stained crooning, there is much fun to be had.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-2121396/SuBo-musical-treats-BGT-star-TLC.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-2121396/SuBo-musical-treats-BGT-star-TLC.html#ixzz1qN70lLAx

graysea

Theatre review: I Dreamed a Dream, Newcastle Theatre Royal

Published on Wednesday 28 March 2012 00:52

WHEN I left the theatre, the last notes of Susan Boyle’s big anthem, Who I Was Born To Be, were still echoing from the walls of the big, glowing auditorium of the Theatre Royal in Newcastle.

And the lady herself, in sparkling red, was reaching out to welcome the rest of the cast back on stage for a final bow, after an evening that first tells the story of her golden voice, and then – in an undeniably powerful moment of theatre – offers us the chance to experience it for herself, in two brief numbers that form the finale of the show.

All across Britain’s big theatres, in this century, the stages are full of shows that celebrate and pay tribute to the music that increasingly shapes everyday lives, telling the stories of the people who created it, tapping into the huge reservoir of feeling it inspires; at their worst, they’re called “jukebox musicals”, opportunistic efforts to sell a loosely-linked evening of familiar tunes to fans who offer easy pickings to the masters of niche marketing.

At their best, though – well, like any form of theatre, they’re capable of surprising the audience, moving them in disturbing and unexpected ways, inspiring fine writing and powerful musical performances. And although the new Susan Boyle musical I Dreamed a Dream is not the greatest musical I’ve ever seen, it certainly has a rare intensity, and terrific theatrical energy.

Co-written by Scottish panto genius Alan McHugh and Elaine C Smith, who also stars as SuBo – and schedule to tour on to Aberdeen next month, and to Glasgow and Edinburgh in the autumn – it’s set by designer Morgan Large on a dark stage backed by a wall of television and computer screens, some old-fashioned, some state-of-the-art; it’s a powerful image of a life shaped by the telly, from Boyle’s birth in West Lothian in 1961, to the iconic moment when her first appearance on Britain’s Got Talent went viral on internet screens, flashing around the globe in less than six minutes.

There is a kind of paradox at the heart of this version of Susan Boyle’s story, in that it comes in the form of a first-person narrative, and therefore gives a powerful, articulate speaking voice to a woman famously able to express herself best through the songs she sings; the Susan conjured up for us by Elaine C Smith, in a tremendously effective and moving star performance, almost inevitably has a confidence and presence, when not singing, that Boyle famously lacked.

If we can look beyond that slight hitch in the show’s relationship with reality though, what we see is a clever, honest and highly theatrical script, which never tries to evade the darker aspects of Boyle’s experience, from the bullying at school, to the brutalising by the tabloids that followed her success.

The show features a fine supporting cast of 11 actors, a seven-piece band, and a brilliantly-chosen playlist of popular standards, from Daydream Believer and Mad World to Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. And in the end it emerges as a vigorous, thoughtful and inspiring tribute to the life so far of a woman who was brutally dismissed as brain-damaged at birth, but who clung to the powerful love of the family who raised her, to the knowledge of her own talent, and to her dream of a life as a singer, until – in a moment of pure theatrical magic – that dream began to come true.

Rating: ****

http://www.scotsman.com/news/theatre-review-i-dreamed-a-dream-newcastle-theatre-royal-1-2199668

graysea

Standing ovation for Boyle at show

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Susan Boyle on stage at the end of the opening night of I Dreamed A Dream at Newcastle's Theatre Royal

ENLARGE

Singer Susan Boyle received a standing ovation as she sang at the finale of the opening night of the musical based on her life.

Fans from across the world travelled to Newcastle's Theatre Royal to see I Dreamed A Dream.

Both sad and funny, it charts her life growing up in a large Catholic family in Blackburn, West Lothian, until she was catapulted to world fame in 2009 after her jaw-dropping audition for Britain's Got Talent.

She is played by Scottish actress Elaine C Smith, who co-wrote the show and who herself demonstrates a talented voice.

She won a standing ovation - as did the rest of the cast - at the curtain call.

Boyle, 50, took to the stage in a shimmering red dress and belted out the title song to an adoring audience.

When an American voice shouted from the stalls "We love you", she replied: "I love you too, see you outside."

After the show adoring fans gathered at the stage door.

Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders were also among those hoping for a glimpse of Boyle after the show.

The show will tour for the rest of the year with Boyle expected to sing at the curtain call of many of the performances.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/music/news/standing-ovation-for-boyle-at-show-16137037.html

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/music/news/standing-ovation-for-boyle-at-show-16137037.html#ixzz1qMNCXtAk

graysea

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/entertainment-in-newcastle/theatre/2012/03/27/review-i-dreamed-a-dream-theatre-royal-newcastle-72703-30638513/

Review: I Dreamed A Dream, Theatre Royal Newcastle - VIDEO - Theatre & Arts - Entertainment from @EveningChron

Review: I Dreamed A Dream, Theatre Royal Newcastle - VIDEO

By Gordon Barr
Mar 27 2012

Elaine C Smith in I Dreamed A Dream

Entertainment Editor GORDON BARR reviews the world premiere of I Dreamed A Dream, The Susan Boyle Musical, at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle

A TALE of triumph over adversity so absurd it's unbelievable - except this tale is true! How many people can vouch to having a musical written about them just three years after they first entered the worldwide public conscience?

Truth is there is no-one out there with a story to tell quite like Susan Boyle - and I Dreamed A Dream is a fitting testament to that fact.

It’s as gritty and as moving as Blood Brothers, with the added bonus it all really happened.

Elaine C Smith, who co-wrote the musical with Alan McHugh, gives a powerhouse performance as Susan and it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

It’s some time before we get to hear her vocal chords, but when she delivers she does so with gusto - and that waiting in anticipation only adds to the momentum.

A terrific script merges humour with sadness in a split second, and you feel every ounce of that emotion.

Few stones are left unturned in what has been a turbulent, tragic but ultimately life-changing and fulfilling life.

A backdrop of multiple television screens never lets you forget the reality TV aspect of the Susan Boyle story, but we start way back with the birth of the girl who would one day become the world’s biggest-selling artist - the girl whose mother was advised to abort, the girl who was starved of oxygen at birth, the girl who was bullied at school for being different...the girl who eventually conquered the globe.

With a click of a finger we are transported back to significant moments in Susan’s life - compelling, funny, tragic and gripping, with music to match each and every scene.

Merging How Great Thou Art with The Prayer in one of the musical’s most touching moments is a work of genius.

At certain points throughout we hear loud knocking - the voices going round in Susan’s head....in particular from her mother.

Act Two brings us to the Britain’s Got Talent and before all the mayhem and imploding following that fateful first TV screening, we get a glimpse of the lead-up to the now infamous audition.

It’s one of the musical’s many highlights with some spot-on comic timing from the ensemble cast who, it has to be said, shine throughout.

I Dreamed A Dream came about after an off-the-cuff telephone conversation between Elaine C Smith and Wallsend-born Michael Harrison, who has produced the show.

They should be applauded for following it through and director Ed Curtis does a grand job of pulling it all together.

Wild Horses should keep no-one from seeing this musical - it has it all!

If you are lucky enough to have Susan perform at the end of the show, it is the icing on an already delicious and multi-layered cake!

Her renditions of I Dreamed A Dream and Who I Was Born to be are spine-tingling.

I Dreamed A Dream is at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, until Saturday.

Read More http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/entertainment-in-newcastle/theatre/2012/03/27/review-i-dreamed-a-dream-theatre-royal-newcastle-72703-30638513/#ixzz1qMEMrFOb

Susan Boyle: Singer and Now Businesswoman

By Marie Sheahan Brown

Who can forget the YouTube masterpiece? She strode and sashayed onto the stage with golden stature and confidence. She sparred wittily with the three famous judges, wearied by their long day of auditions in Glasgow, Scotland. She didn’t look the part of a “professional singer,” although one might perceive that being “currently unemployed” at forty-seven left little extra for beauty-shop pampering. Was she, rather, a comedienne? Susan Boyle audition

Then she sang. The formerly skeptical audience stood enraptured, tears welling as she belted out “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Misérables with stunning clarity and passion.

More than five years after the seven-minute audition video aired on Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009, and promptly hit worldwide news feeds, multitudes in America and beyond remember Susan Boyle. Since she first broke Amazon pre-sale records in September 2009, millions have bought her albums. Each year, a new carefully crafted album has been released in time for Christmas. Since 2009, five albums have garnered sixty-three gold and ninety-four platinum sales levels in forty-two countries. Her sixth album, Hope, will be released on October 21 in the United States.

Scottish and United Kingdom audiences thrilled to Miss Boyle’s first full-length concert tours in 2013 and 2014. Now she’s coming to America—home of an immediate and strong support base—starting in San Diego on October 8, and singing her way across the southern half of the United States at venues in twenty cities. A sweep through the northern states could likely follow in the future.

See http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/events

Many have written about Susan Boyle’s difficult and graced life. Her 2010 autobiography, The Woman I Was Born to Be, is a good source. Now fifty-three, she carefully revealed late in 2013 that, after decades of mistaken assumptions, she had finally been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The relief of self-knowledge strengthens and encourages her after a lifetime of dealing with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and some difficulty in handling emotions and relating comfortably to people.

“This is a point: People may have problems,” she states in a documentary, “but they’ve got other things as well. And they’ve got a lot more to offer.” (Gammon, Lottie, produced, filmed, and directed. “There’s Something About Susan.” Firecracker Films Ltd. for ITV, 45:37 minutes. 2013)

Fewer analyses have considered her role as a small businesswoman and philanthropist whose personal success has enhanced the lives and small businesses of countless others not only in her native Scotland but also in, for example, America.

Miss Boyle, easily mistaken for a stately five feet ten in the famous video, is, in fact, barely over five feet tall with soft, dainty hands and feet—a huggable China doll. So she does qualify as a smallbusinesswoman despite her multimillions in sales, which also benefit business giants like Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited; SYCOmusic (Simon Cowell); Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Amazon; and, more recently, concert tour bus companies. In significant other ways, she retains her focus on the little ones.

The woman who had “never been married, never been kissed” and remains a virgin has, since 2009, given birth with astonishing fecundity. Lewis Hyde well describes her kind of gift and fertility in his 1983 classic, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: “I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”

Mr. Hyde first explores traditional “gift economies,” in which citizens are considered wealthy not according to how much they acquire but how much they give. In fictional form, Jean M. Auel’s well-researched Earth’s Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear and five sequels) describes the creativity and ingenuity that led people to survive, to form communities, and to work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Goods, services, storytelling and musical talents, art, and many other gifts were appreciated in deeper ways than they might be in a typical “market economy.”

According to reviewer JoAnn Schwartz, “Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the ‘gift economy’ is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of gift exchange as ‘erotic’ commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos.

“In a market economy,” Ms. Schwartz continues, “one can hoard one’s goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding—although we generally call it ‘saving.’ In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase—increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement, and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.” (http://southerncrossreview.org/4/schwartz.html)

Susan Boyle does appreciate the financial security that she had never known, especially in the fearsome years after her mother died in 2007, when Miss Boyle kept her house cold so that she could afford the heating bill. Yet more important, Susan Boyle has said all along, “I sing to make people happy.” When she was a girl, the gift spoke “commandingly to the soul”—her soul. She honed, honed, honed the gift to perfection over decades of world obscurity. She sees with gratitude and humility the effects of this gift on people worldwide. When this gift is pointed out to her in personal conversation, she bows her head and lowers her eyes shyly. “Thank you.”

Miss Boyle’s fame and financial success have boosted tourism modestly in West Lothian, Scotland, with its pastoral more than spectacular scenery, a region that has suffered from bouts of economic depression and unemployment over the past few centuries. In February 2013, for example, following a centuries-old pattern, the main employer in the area—Halls of Broxburn meat processing plant—was closed by foreign owners, leaving 1,700 unemployed.

Lorraine Campbell co-owns and manages The Balbairdie—a nicely refurbished old hotel and pub in Bathgate, West Lothian. When the economy suffers, The Balbairdie feels it. Asked how she copes, Ms. Campbell replied, “You just keep going.” Happily, the local economy has improved some since 2013, according to Ms. Campbell in April 2014.

Miss Boyle has engaged experts like Andy Stephens, manager; Nicola Phillips, publicist; and Andrew Panton, creative and vocal director, to name a few. She has provided jobs for local personal assistants who handle correspondence, scheduling, wardrobe consultation, and myriad other details; gardeners; carpenters to renovate the council house she grew up and still lives in (her first big post-Britain’s Got Talent purchase); a housekeeper; women who fix her hair, do her nails, and apply her makeup for special public appearances and photo sessions; and others who tend to basic needs of a now-busy celebrity who still prefers to live in her home village, stop in at her favorite small shops and establishments, and take the bus.

Miss Boyle has also given seed money and sponsorship for creative business and charitable ventures in her local community and beyond. One start-up, Boyle’s Boutique, is an extended-family cottage industry that sells, among others, products featuring the new Boyle Tartan created for the family. Products may be ordered online.

Susan Boyle’s very capable personal assistant Sadie Boyle (no relation) says Miss Boyle gets about four hundred emails weekly, many requesting her generosity. This kind of response to another’s fame and fortune is not uncommon.

More unusual, and a clearer example of the fruits of the “gift economy,” is the generation of a worldwide community of Susan Boyle supporter-fans who have formed friendships, discovered or rekindled their own creative gifts, invested thousands of volunteer hours, spread financial generosity, and—to a small extent—started creative cottage enterprises for profit or merely to cover expenses.

Several unofficial Susan Boyle fansites live on the Internet. The first and largest, still flourishing, is www.susan-boyle.com. On April 11, 2009, Paul Wood, a London construction worker, watched Miss Boyle’s audition on TV and immediately put up a website. Starting within hours after the audition aired, people from many continents to whom Susan Boyle’s gift spoke “commandingly to the soul” were “irresistibly move[d]” to find out anything they could about her on the Internet. They frequently stumbled across Mr. Wood’s hastily launched site with its prolific discussion threads generating hundreds of written comments every day in the first two months of Miss Boyle’s fame.

To bring some order to the conversational chaos, Mr. Wood launched a companion Forum in June 2009 with more sophisticated software, accessed through the main website. Anyone could (and still can) join for free. The main rules are that one not be an Internet troll (a term and experience many had never heard of), that one behave reasonably civilly as outlined in posted guidelines, and that one not use the Forum itself for commercial purposes (more on that later).

Volunteer moderators and techies keep the discussions and online experience on an even keel. Online advertisements generated by Google AdSense and Amazon sales linked to the website (“SuBo Store”) help pay for the normal operational expenses.

In early 2010, Mr. Wood announced that he was going to auction off the website (some fifty thousand registered members) and its Forum (a few thousand registered members at the time). The worldwide member community could not bear the prospect of being taken over by some unknown commercial entity with other goals. So they decided to bid on the fansite themselves. A few members—by no means wealthy—each voluntarily loaned trusted fellow members a few thousand dollars to buy the fansite during the auction. The effort succeeded in July 2010.

Navigating through some tensions and hurt feelings (typical in any community anywhere), the worldwide Susan Boyle Fans International, Inc. (SBFII) community established itself as a non-profit corporation registered in Delaware, USA. SBFII elects a multinational volunteer board of directors; keeps meticulous financial records and files annual tax returns; maintains bylaws; and holds online annual meetings and elections engaging active members. Technically not a charity, SBFII uses AdSense and SuBo Store income to cover modest expenses and keep a healthy bank balance. Funds left over from voluntary collections (often for tasteful gifts for Miss Boyle for special occasions) are donated to a charity of Susan Boyle’s choice, frequently benefitting children in Scotland. By December 2011, SBFII repaid all interest-free loans given by members to buy the website; it remains debt free. No member gets paid for services to SBFII or personally benefits financially.

From the beginning, even silver-haired grandmothers proficient only with email learned to navigate the fansites in order to participate in a community of people who have experienced an inexplicable response to Susan Boyle—both her singing and her unique way of being—unlike their response to other favorite singers. Within months, members began gathering in person around the globe (often in restaurants, boosting local economies). They attended (and surreptitiously filmed and posted to the fansites for the enjoyment of those who could not attend) Miss Boyle’s performances in various cities (Britain’s Got Talent tour venues in the UK; Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, and more). Supporter-fans flocked to these events even though—until only 2013, when she first tried her own full-length concerts in Scotland—Miss Boyle was slated to sing just one, two, maybe three songs. These gatherings supported local hotels, B+Bs, restaurants, cab drivers, shops, and other travel-related businesses.

Miss Boyle and her team soon experienced that supporter-fans who came to these early events were older or at least more mature than stereotypical rowdies at, for example, Justin Bieber concerts. They saw that typical Susan Boyle supporter-fans are responsible, respectful, fun loving, generative. They include retired or active professionals—teachers, nurses, techies, writers, musicians, artists, farmers, truckers, businesspeople, social workers, radio hosts, professors, lawyers, homemakers, construction workers, postmasters, foresters.

To most gatherings (usually at restaurants) supporter-fans bring homemade memorabilia to share, including commemorative buttons and red scarves to identify themselves in various venues. The popularity of such items led SBFII to add another linked site, “Fan Creations,” linked in turn to the creators’ individual websites. Products include non-Susan-Boyle-related fan creations. Currently, three members offer SuBotique Hand Painted Apparel; Creative Images by tweek (Buttons, Mugs, etc.); and Susan Boyle Professional Singer chronicles gathered from news and other sources.

SBFII members often post creative ideas and images to discuss in writing with one another. Memorably, in 2009, a member from Texas, one from Iowa, and other volunteers, coordinated an international quilting bee. Supporter-fans from every continent, including Antarctica, created and mailed squares for a handmade quilt presented to Miss Boyle at a brunch following her debut solo appearance on the Todayshow on November 23—the day her first album, I Dreamed A Dream, was released in the United States and quickly broke world records in several categories.

Members can upload Susan-related videos that they have created; share poems that they’ve written; upload posters that they’ve designed digitally to document Miss Boyle’s career and accomplishments; upload news reports of supporter-fan activities, complete with photographs; post fine pencil drawings or paintings displaying talent the artists had only recently discovered; and offer a place where members can contribute their own essays. These essays, sometimes written in French or other non-English languages, often try to explain how the wee singer with the big voice; the shy woman who communicates profoundly—cor ad cor loquitur—through music others have written; the multimillionaire who stays in her small lifelong home and still takes the bus—the essentially inexplicable Susan Boyle—“irresistibly moves” them.

SBFII and other volunteers take responsibility to daily and positively post or re-post Susan Boyle news, photos, and encounters on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Their Internet involvement began immediately when Miss Boyle became famous—and once again experienced the bullying known since childhood, only this time inflicted by some members of the media and anonymous commentators. She writes in her autobiography, “What I didn’t know then, because I didn’t have a computer at the time, was that every time there was a mean comment about me in the press, a dozen messages of support would appear in response. On the Internet there was a growing community of fans. I had no idea how many people out there in the world felt moved to stick up for me, and I want to thank everybody for that.” (The Woman I Was Born to Be, pages 188–189)

Miss Boyle’s professional team also encourages creativity from fans. Starting with the first documentary of her life, Susan Boyle: I Dreamed A Dream, produced in 2009 by Talkback Thames, fans were invited via the official www.susanboylemusic.com site (picked up and promoted by volunteer sites) to send short videos of themselves saying “Hello, Susan!” with backdrops representing their locations. Several clips from around the world were chosen for the documentary. As a lead-up to Miss Boyle’s second album, The Gift, she held a worldwide “Susan’s Search” competition, inviting any amateur singer to upload a brief selfie singing “Silent Night.” The winner, Amber Stassi, a thirty-three-year-old paramedic from Brewerton, New York, sang “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with Miss Boyle on the album and at the 2010 outdoor Today show appearance in New York City.

In the 2013 and 2014 concert tours in Scotland and the United Kingdom, Miss Boyle and her team selected local choirs to serve as back-up choruses in every city, receiving standard financial compensation. Already individual choir members in the United States are tweeting: “Aaliyah Buchanan ‏@Itsuko_Sora I’m to pumped, i get to sing for Susan Boyle!!!!” and “Drew Mikuska ‏@DrewMikuska Hahahahaha I’m singing backup for Susan Boyle.”

Already in the twenty cities spanning the southern United States, supporter-fans from as far away as Australia and Scotland are buying tickets. They are organizing pre-concert dinner-camaraderie gatherings for supporter-fans, some of whom they have never met in person but know through their written posts on fansites. Restaurants, hotels, theaters, airlines, public transportation providers, cab drivers, and many small businesses will benefit. Susan Boyle, her team, and numerous music-related vendors will profit.

Yet in Susan Boyle’s “gift economy,” which she neither forecasted nor manipulated, money can facilitate but cannot possibly buy the greatest benefits to the community in which she finds herself to be the generator and principal member. In this higher economy, she is both blessed herself and a blessing to countless others.

As recently reported on her official website, Susan says about her upcoming United States concert tour: “This is a brilliant moment for me. The past five years have been incredible, and it just keeps getting better. I have spoken so often about wanting to tour America and be able to visit different cities for the first time—I’m so excited. This really will be fantastic, and I can’t wait for October. The US embraced and supported me from the beginning, and it really feels like a second home. So I can’t wait to get on the road and perform there.”

Source:Small Business Exchange Northeast